Yes, I think this was why he was a bit unlucky. Politics was dominated for much of his tenure by something he was ambivalent about but just couldn’t escape.

Another irony that occurs to me - Corbyn has been Labour leader since September 2015. One could make a strong case that, in that time, Johnson has done a lot more to thwart the ambitions of Conservative Prime Ministers than Corbyn.

Yes Johnson basically did for both Cameron and May.

But also Corbyn must have a private chuckle at the way the terms of debate have shifted since he's been Labour leader.

Just think back in 2015 when Corbyn came in if you could have a crystal ball and said this is what the government will be doing in 2020:

- Raising the minimum wage by 6.2% despite business groups condemning it as a crazy rise in the current unstable economic climate

- Promising to use taxpayers' money to subsidise ailing manufacturing industries

- Talking about a huge swathe of public investment to reinvigorate the north

- Stripping Northern Rail of their franchise and putting the government on standby to take the line back into public ownership

- Using price-capping in energy markets

....what would the Tories have been saying? They would have seen this as the kind of apocalyptic vision of what a Corbyn-led government would inflict on the UK and destroy the economy.

Now I bet Sal Paradise will be able to make a good argument in favour of each one of those. In 2015....not so sure. He'll have been on an ideological journey like the rest of the Tories and ended up in some spaces that Corbyn has occupied for a long time.

What's really been killed off dramatically in a short space of time, by both Johnson and Corbyn, is the 'Cameron agenda' of small-state, free-market austerity-focused economics mixed with Blairite social liberalism. Given Cameron wasn't going to run again in 2020, I think 2019 was supposed to be the year he handed over to his heir Osborne to carry the torch in to the 2020s.

I disagree I think it is simply of the mind is mightier than the sword - a contributory reason as to why these people are so successful is their intelligence being out thought by a faster more precise mind is the one thing that is difficult to counter. They are very good at networking but first and foremost it is the mental agility that gives these people an edge. This comes across as arrogant because most simply cannot keep up - I see it even on this board. They are the SAS of young talent in this country - they are not the only source of talent - my son went to Durham and there are some clever people there but there is a distinct gap between Oxbridge and the rest.

Cummins' views on the civil service make a lot of sense - too many generalists - too wishy/washy - very too arrogant. Kerslake was on Today this morning - his it can change but it takes decades is the root of the problem its jobs for the boys!!

Corbyn/McDonald - were so far off the mark intellectually and it showed - McDonald invited John Cauldwell to discuss Labour's policies and he was so far off the mark it was embarrassing - Caudwell was three steps ahead of him all the time. McDonald spent all his time thinking about what he could and couldn't say he sounded ponderous and incoherent most of the time - simply not joined up.

Chill out brother.
I detest the mindset of grubs like IR80 and Sal more than you could ever imagine.

Just out of curiosity, are you suggesting that I (for example) find Boris Johnson (for example) arrogant because I can’t keep up with the agility and precision of his thinking? This could be a rich seam of trolling for you.

Does your intellectual-SAS metaphor apply to all Oxbridge graduates or just the Bullingdon-types? If the former, I have some friends who I think will rather enjoy it on a couple of levels. Or maybe more than a couple, as they’re no doubt thinking in more dimensions than me.

No and also wouldn't have predicted in 2010 what would have happened in Scotland from 2015 onwards. In both cases there was a game changer in terms of a referendum.

But also when you look at politics over time, you see how unpredictable it is and how foolish many of the prevailing political predictions are1992 - "If Labour can't win now they can NEVER win"

Major wins against the odds after the Tories had already been in power 13 years, coming off the debacle of the Poll Tax, a recession and with many of the 1980s homebuyers stuck in negative equity. The general take was that Labour couldn't win in those conditions, their only hope was an alliance with the Lib Dems to try and get a coalition in 1997 and establish proportional representation.

Result2003 - "The Conservative party is dead"

Everyone talks about how bad this Labour defeat in 2019 was - 202 seats, lowest since before the war, worse than 1983. The Conservatives went sub-200 seats for three consecutive elections, 1997, 2001 and 2005!

Blair at this time - before the lies of Iraq had really sunk in - was unusually successful as a PM, at least in political terms. Even Thatcher went through periods of deep unpopularity between her election wins. Blair had sky high satisfaction ratings, Labour had huge leads in the polls for basically 10 straight years from when he took over as leader. The business community was pro-Blair, the tabloids were pro-Blair, the Tories really had nowhere to go. This was the time when we had Ian Duncan Smith saying "the quiet man is turning up the volume" and all that crap. He got deposed as leader and out of desperation the party went to Michael Howard - who epitomised the 'nasty Tory' image the 'modernisers' said they had to shed, but at least seemed like he could be credible across the despatch box against Blair. But at this point it looked like the Tories' demise was terminal.

Result2010 - "Cleggmania - end of the two-party monopoly"

After the first ever leaders' debate, the Lib Dems shot to the top of the polls for the first time since the brief SDP-Liberal Alliance lead in the early 80s. But this was about 2 weeks out from an election! Although the Clegg bounce had dipped a bit before polling day, there was talk of the Lib Dems pushing 100 seats and rewriting the two-party system

Result2017 - "Theresa May's coronation"Resultlater in 2017 - "Jeremy Corbyn will be the next Prime Minister"Result: Two things really screwed Corbyn. His inability to deal with antisemitism, and his prevarication on Brexit. The first exposed a lot of nasty things within the Labour party, and made him toxic to a lot of the liberal-minded centre left, who decided they couldn't vote Labour again while he was leader. The second separated him from his big youth base, who switched towards campaigning for a second referendum instead of turning up to his Oh Jeremy Corbyn rallies. In the end, Corbyn led Labour to the kind of defeat in 2019, that most people predicted would happen in 2020, when Corbyn first took over the leadership in 2015!

Corbyn has definitely shifted the dial - the idea that it is everyman for himself is dead - I wouldn't be surprised to see a rise in income tax and a lowering of VAT before the end of this Tory government. This way the poor really benefit, they will be out of the tax system and the goods they buy will be cheaper - win win wealth redistribution

You do know that Blair and Campbell went to Oxford and Cambridge, respectively? Blakely went to Oxford, as well.

What saddens me about ‘young’ Oxbridge types like Johnson and Cameron, who are both about a decade older than me, is that they’ve somehow convinced people like you that they are better than you.

Nope, they never said it, how is LORD Prescott, Mrs and Mrs Kinnock, cuckoo Scargill, Paddy Pantsdown?

you hail them, and they where no different.

When it comes to politics, you bring a water balloon to a gun fight.